CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 2: The Man on the Couch
I stepped inside before she could stop me.
“Nathan,” she whispered, grabbing my sleeve. “Please don’t make it worse.”
That sentence almost broke me.
Because it meant worse already existed.
Derek was on the couch with his feet on the coffee table, a beer in one hand, the television glowing blue across his lazy face. He wore a stained white tank top under an open flannel shirt. His hair was messy. His jaw was unshaven. He looked less like a husband than a man waiting for everyone else to clean up his life.
He saw me staring at Lily’s face and smirked.
“Relax, hero,” he said. “She’s always dramatic.”
The room went still.
Lily looked down at the floor like she had been trained to disappear.
I remembered her at eight years old, running through our backyard with grass stains on her knees, yelling that she could climb higher than me. I remembered her stealing my hoodies in high school and pretending she didn’t. I remembered her wedding day, when she looked at me before walking down the aisle and whispered, “Tell me I’m not making a mistake.”
I had lied.
I had said, “You’re going to be okay.”
Now she was standing beside me with a black eye while her husband laughed from the couch.
I put the remaining grocery bag on the floor.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Because if I moved too fast, I wasn’t sure what kind of man I would become.
I walked into the living room.
Derek took another sip of beer.
I kept my voice low. “Did you do that to her?”
He rolled his eyes. “Man, don’t come into my house acting crazy.”
“Answer me.”
Lily’s hand touched my arm. “Nathan.”
Derek stood up lazily, swaying with fake confidence, like he thought being bigger than her meant he was dangerous to everyone.
“She’s my wife,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Maybe teach her not to run her mouth.”
That was the moment the last piece of restraint in me snapped.
May you like
Not because I wanted to hurt him.
Because he had just admitted he believed he had the right to hurt her.
